Femtojoule optical Kerr switching with milliwatt-peak-power in silicon-organic hybrid nanocavity

All-optical Kerr switches enable ultrafast switching speeds, essential for next-generation communication and computing. However, their practical deployment is hindered by the intrinsically weak optical nonlinearity, which necessitates high switching energies. Although ultrashort pulses with Watt-level peak powers and extremely low duty cycles can alleviate this requirement, they are incompatible with real-world systems that demand high-duty-cycle data. In this work, we overcome this long-standing challenge by experimentally demonstrating an optical Kerr switch compatible with mainstream communication signals, while maintaining femtojoule-level switching energy. The breakthrough is achieved through a combination of exceptionally tight optical field confinement and a high-nonlinearity polymer material in a silicon-organic hybrid slot nanobeam cavity. This design reduces the required peak power to milliwatt-level, approximately two orders of magnitude lower than previous Kerr switches, enabling error-free switching of a 33%-duty-cycle 40-Gbit/s signal with 7.5 mW peak power and 63 fJ/bit switching energy. These achievements pave the way for chip-scale all-optical switches for ultrafast photonic signal processing.